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Posts from the ‘Reading Updates’ Category

What’s In A Name?

Things Fall Apart is an outstanding book. I’m only halfway through it, and I can already tell that I’m going to love this one.

I’m a 36-year-old white guy in Tennessee. I’ve never been to Nigeria, much less the Nigeria of the late 19th Century. So it’s really a testament to Chinua Achebe’s writing and creativity that I really feel like I’m there when reading this story. I feel like I connect with these characters, even though there customs and culture is a world apart from mine.

Speaking of that, one of the most difficult aspects of the novel has been keeping up with all the names. It seems that many names with the clan start with an O, and it’s not Oscar and Oliver and Obi-Wan and names that I would be familiar with. It’s names that I’m pretty sure I’m not pronouncing correctly in my head.

For instance:

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The Votes Are In For The Next 5 Novels

This is one of my favorite parts of the 101 Books project–picking the next five books to read. You guys helped me out with it this time around.

The votes from over the weekend are in. As you know, I picked An American Tragedy and The Bridge Of San Luis Rey. The top vote getters from you guys was Atonement, Invisible Man, and The Grapes of Wrath.

Here’s a little about each book.

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Help Me Pick The Next Five Novels

So I’m wrapping up Wide Sargasso Sea. And, after that, I’ll be reading Things Fall Apart, which will be book #43.

But that’s all I have planned at the moment. So I need some help selecting the next five novels I’ll be reading from the Time list. And that’s where you come in.

I’ve selected two of the next five novels–An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder–but I was hoping you guys could vote on the other three.

What do you say?

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A Comma Explosion From “Under The Volcano”

I love commas. I really do.

Commas are one of my favorite punctuation marks. Commas allow you to breathe. They help you establish a certain cadence and rhythm as a writer. Unless you are William Faulkner, you’ve probably used a comma or two in your writing.

But can you have too much of a good thing? Can your writing have too many commas?

Oh yes. Yes it can.

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The First 40: A Look Back

This project is 40% done, people. The next time I do a “look back” post like this, 101 Books will be halfway complete! What will I do?

Today’s post is simply a review of some highlights and lowlights from the first 40 novels. It’s a 101 Books Award Show, if you will, except that there are no awards to hand out and no drunken celebrities to present them.

Let us begin.

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The Art Of The Sentence Bomb

Have you ever been reading along in a book, appreciating the author’s style, the story, the character and setting descriptions, when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, like a big pile of space debris that lands in your backyard, the author drops a earth-shattering bomb on the plot?

I’m sure there’s probably a literary term for this, but I can’t recall what it might be. So I’ll simply call it a “sentence bomb.”

Carson McCullers is an expert at this. At least three or four times during The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, she has thrown in one sentence–ONE SENTENCE–out of nowhere, that changes everything in her story.

For those of you who might want to read this book, I won’t quote an example from the book because it would be too much of a spoiler. So I’ll come up with my own amateurish example of what a sentence bomb might look like:

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Here’s One For The Misfits

One of the things I like about The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter—at least to this point—is its representation of the misfits of society—the people who are forgotten (at worst) and underappreciated (at best).

McCullers writes about Mr. Singer, a deaf and mute man who is called “dumb and mute” by the townsfolk. There’s Mick Kelly, a tall, gangly, and awkward 14-year-old girl who takes care of her younger siblings while dreaming of a better life.

There’s Dr. Copeland, the angry and preachy African-American doctor who sees communism as the solution to racism and prejudice.

And then there’s Jake Blount, essentially the town drunk, who befriends Singer and uses the deaf man as a sounding board for his own religious and political views.

During one such episode, Blount possibly sums up the premise of the entire novel—the point of view of these people, the misfits of their community.

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Don’t Get Divorced Like This

John Cheever has a knack for making a serious subject (e.g. life in prison, divorce) and making a humorous situation out of it.

I shared one excerpt from Falconer with you last week–a situation in which Farragut is writing his girlfriend from prison. I find the example in today’s post even funnier, again, in a dry kind of way.

This excerpt is a flashback late in the novel before Farragut is in prison. Eben, Farragut’s punk brother, and his wife are arguing.

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A Letter From Falconer Prison

Falconer is an unusual novel.

It’s funny. It’s disturbing. It’s contemplative. It’s like a mix of Catch 22, Deliverance, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. To break that down a little further, it has the humor of Catch 22, the graphic, nasty stuff of Deliverance, and the “captivity” elements of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

And I love the humor. One of my favorite surprises in a novel is unexpected humor.

This passage from Falconer is a letter that the protagonist, Farragut, is writing to his girlfriend from prison:

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And The Next Five Novels Will Be…

I’ll be reviewing Dog Soldiers tomorrow, my 38th read from the Time list. That means it’s time to lay out the next five novels. I took the liberty to pick out the next batch this time around. But I think that, next time, I’ll open it up for you guys to pick them again.

The general thought process behind my selections is to go with a couple of novels I’m totally unfamiliar with, as well as a couple that I have at least heard of.

So here are books 39-43, in no particular order:

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